


Lily of the Opera

by cobwebcorner



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2018-11-01 21:32:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10930443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cobwebcorner/pseuds/cobwebcorner
Summary: The opera ghost really exists. She is no tall tale conjured by the ballet rats, no delusion of the scene shifters brought about by hard drink and long work. No, she exists, and the opera shudders under her command as much as it enjoys her protection.Have you heard the latest rumor?They say her name is Christine.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Cross posting my role-reversal fancomic from tumblr. Only Christine and Erik are outright switched, all other characters maneuver around them to fit.

 

Christine once had a father who loved her.

With every year that wedged itself between herself and her childhood, she came to understand more deeply how rare that love had been, how precious her fragile memories.

She had been born in Sweden, to a sickly mother who lived two years more before dying. After that, she and her father left their home and drifted from town to town, never settling again. They traveled all over Europe this way, heading gradually south. Her father played his violin for their bread, while Christine sang from the shadows behind him. Even young and half-trained, her voice drew small crowds to them as easily as the pied piper once summoned the rats of Hamelin, and she and her father never starved.

Whenever people became too curious about her mask or, worst of all, the covering slipped or was stolen, her father would bundle her away to the next town, far from jeering, cursing crowds.

“Your face must be kept secret,” her father had told her when he gave her the first mask. “It is a secret you can tell only to someone you trust deeply. Someone who loves you.”

And she wore that mask happily.

Her father taught her to sing. He taught her to read music before letters. He would sit her on his knee and tell her fairy stories of her home country, and her favorites were the dark tales about monsters more frightening than herself.

They were not always happy, and life was often hard, but so long as they were together Christine was content.

But fathers die, as all mortals do, and Christine’s father left the earth much sooner than most.

Alone in a world that could not abide her secret, she shut herself away in the last sanctuary he had found for her, in the hidden passages deep below the Paris Opera House. There, she resolved to wait for the angel he had promised her…


	2. Prologue part deux

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Still in the prologue here folks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the tiny pictures; I'm still trying to get hosting worked out.

 

Christine became a ghost quite by accident.

She was a clumsy spook in those early days, unaccustomed to sneaking around. First a stagehand spotted her on the stairway to the cellars, and then a fireman glimpsed her passing by in the 3rd basement. Soon rumors of the Opera’s new resident specter had reached every corner of the company, and Christine found herself the sudden subject of legend.

Some said she was the spirit of a diva who had committed suicide after being abandoned by her patron. Others claimed she had died a prisoner of the communards during their occupation of the half-finished opera.

Sometimes she wished their tales were the truth. If only she had once been a diva, even a short-lived and unhappy one, to remember the warm glow of the stage lights and the adoring eyes of all Paris upon her! To have had a life, any life, as a normal girl with a normal face, instead of being born dead! But no amount of wishing would make it true.

One day, she was drawn from her daily haunting of the halls by the most beautiful music. It came in fits and starts, sung by a voice which kept stumbling and pausing, but even so the notes called to something in her heart, reeling her in like a fish on a line to one of the practice rooms. There she found the new Spanish diva, stamping her foot and cursing at the ceiling.

“This man’s works are _impossible!_ Does he not know that people need to _breathe_?” she said.

Christine was so taken by the music that she forgot herself, and spoke: “What song is that?”

“It is the new work by Dumont, curse him. ‘Don Juan Triumphant,’ he calls it,” the diva huffed, then seemed to realize she was being spoken to, and whirled around to glare at the room. “Who is that there? Did I not say I did not want to be disturbed? …well? Show yourself!”

She would have slunk away then in embarrassment, but the sight of the diva looking for her, unable to find her, filled her with sudden inspiration. She remembered a trick taught to her years before, by a member of the carnival she and her father had traveled with briefly.

“Have you not heard of me?” Christine said, her voice coming from a spot just over the diva’s shoulder. The woman turned, but of course saw no one there. “I am the opera ghost!” And now the voice came from the ceiling, filling the whole room and shaking the mirrors.

“I do not believe in such superstitious rot!” the diva Carlotta insisted, drawing herself up straight. “There are no ghosts here—why, you must be one of the ballet rats, trying to play a trick!”

“It does not matter to me if you believe,” Christine replied. “This song, you’re having a lot of trouble with it?”

“It is impossible!” Carlotta said, happy to return to the subject of her complaint. “The man is mad if he thinks anyone can sing this.”

In her pacing Carlotta had moved a little to the side, so Christine could read the music from her vantage point behind one of the many mirrors. She opened her mouth, and began to sing, letting her ethereal voice spill over the room. It felt good to sing for an audience again. She sang all the way to the end of the page, where she had to stop. Carlotta had fallen silent, in fact, she seemed to be hardly breathing.

“Can you turn the page? I have no hands to do so myself.”

“How can you sing like that?” Carlotta said, in a voice so choked it was almost a whisper.

It was the first time Christine had really spoken to a person in years, instead of simply listening. It made her feel _real_ in a way she hadn’t for so long. A full person, able to touch the world and to _change_ it, instead of drifting along as a silent observer. And though her heart pounded with fear over the possible consequences of her actions, the rush of power carried her along beyond the reach of fear. She wanted this to continue.

“I can teach you.”


	3. Saboteur

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I am good at words but slow and painful at drawing, I have decided to write up a text only version of this story for this site. The comic, if that's what you want, will continue to slowly trickle on to my tumblr (which is under the same name) whenever I can make myself sit down and draw. 
> 
> Also: I don't usually use so many exclamation points or ellipses, but I am trying to emulate the style of the original.

The diva Carlotta saw plots against her everywhere she looked. Most were imagined.  
  
But some were real.  
  
That night, she left her dressing room in a cloud of euphoric self-confidence. Her gaze was distant, one might even say dreamy. She did not notice the figure behind her, which watched her with unbroken intensity. Nor did she see how, after she had turned the corner, that same figure drifted to her unlocked dressing room door, and went inside it.  
  
The opera fans of Paris might have recognized this tall and willowy figure as a rival soprano, newly come to the Opera Garnier. She carried a small satchel, and did not light the lamps once inside Carlotta's room.  
  
On the dressing table a red glass bottle glittered, caught in a shaft of light from the doorway. It contained the diva's throat spray, which she used before every performance. Step by quiet step, the rival approached the table. From her satchel, she pulled an identical bottle, with a very different concoction inside.  
  
For tonight was the night of the gala celebrating the retirement of Monsieurs Debienne and Poligny, the Garnier's managers, and a good showing could turn future casting decisions in a young singer's favor. A bad one,on the other hand, could damage a reputation. She reached out for the bottle on the table.  
  
A flicker of white from the mirror, as of light dancing across glass, was her only warning. A clammy, boney hand seized her wrist with inhuman strength, apparently emerging from the glass itself. That crushing grip cinched tighter and tighter until there came a sickening crack from the fine bones of the lady's wrist.  
  
This is not why she screamed.  
  
She screamed because of the face which appeared above the hand, a skull-like face, a death's-head, with yellowed skin and a hole for a nose. Barely any skin clothed the bone, and a cloud of wispy white hair flowed from the scalp. Blue pinprick eyes glared out from the sunken holes that ought to be eyes.  
  
The rival put her trained lungs to work, and screamed with such power that every singer, dancer, and stagehand nearby were startled by the cry. A mob of them came running to that dark little room, and crowded inside the door. They found the girl weeping, alone, in the center of the floor, clutching her broken wrist to her chest.  
  
The sharpest of them looked over the scene and knew immediately what had happened. The apparition had vanished now, and the mirror appeared smooth and innocuous, no more than blank glass. No man of them said it out loud, but their gazes wandered over the room, searching for some glimpse of a skeletal hand, for the burn of blue pinpricks in the shadows.  
  
The Opera Ghost was always watching. If you were naughty, the little ballet rats said, you would not find sweets slipped into your pockets after a good performance. If you were very bad, and tried to sprinkle broken glass into the other girls' shoes, or trip up your rivals, you would see her death's-head looming out of the shadows above you. The glass would find its way to your own shoes, or hands would sneak out of the dark to seize your skirt and pull you off your feet.  
  
The ghost was protective of La Carlotta most of all. This newcomer would not have known, or believed, what force waited for her in this room. Old Joseph Buquet, the chief scene shifter, knelt beside the girl and asked what happened. At the sight of his sober, hangdog face, she began to babble between gasps and sobs.  
  
“A hand! ...from the mirror! It was so cold....and that horrible face! Ghastly face...a skull...like a ghost!”  
  
At that magic word, 'ghost', all the ballet rats ran squealing from the room.  “The ghost, the ghost, the Lady Ghost! [[1](%E2%80%9C#note1%E2%80%9D)]” they hollered, chattering and swooning against each other in their terror and excitement. They ran all the way to the dressing room of La Sorelli, the prima ballerina, who had not appeared to check on the commotion.  
  
Three of the girls nearly barreled the esteemed dancer over in their haste to enter the room, for she had been standing beside the door with her ear pressed to the wood. Immediately she backed up and stamped her foot, glaring at the swarm of little girls in pink.  
  
“What is all this commotion?” she demanded. “Some of us have a speech to practice!”  
  
“Ohhh, it's awful!” chirped little Jammes. “Mlle. Fay snuck into Carlotta's dressing room, and the Lady Ghost caught her!”  
  
“Broke her wrist!”  
  
“Snapped it clean!”  
  
“She nearly fainted!”  
  
“Don't speak foolishness, there is no ghost,” La Sorelli said, and surreptitiously thumbed the sign of St. Andrew's cross onto the little wooden ring on her fourth finger. Like most of the opera company who denounced the ghost's existence most loudly, she believed in the specter with her whole heart. “What was Mlle. Fay doing in Carlotta's room?”  
  
Here the older girls exchanged knowing looks.  
  
“She had a bottle with her.”  
  
“It looked just like the bottle Carlotta uses for her throat spray.”  
  
Sorelli hissed through her teeth. “Then she deserves whatever she got,” she said primly.  
  
A rustle outside the door. The girls all clung to each other, every pair of eyes fixed on the door, trembling in wait for a spectral hand or a death's-head to emerge from the wood. La Sorelli puffed herself up.  
  
“Who is there?”  
  
“Cécile?” The door opened, and Carlotta herself stood in its frame, red-faced and scowling. “What are you all doing in here? Shouldn't you be getting ready for Polyeucte?”  
  
“Did you hear, did you hear?” the girls of the ballet crowded around her at once, like iron shavings to a magnet. “Mlle Fay, in your room!”  
  
“The devil! Yes, I saw her. The clumsy scoundrel deserves every broken bone.”  
  
Several of the girls piped up to correct the diva that it had definitely been a ghost, and not any clumsy mishap, that had broken Mlle. Fay's wrist. Carlotta would not hear it.  
  
“Superstitious nonsense!” She bellowed, and oh, but the diva could bellow! Yet to the keen eye, the diva's face held a glimmer of satisfaction. “There are no ghosts here, only a lot of silly girls and empty-headed stagehands working themselves into a tizzy. Well! I will have to use someone else's dressing room, as everyone has seen fit to invade mine!” And she left, with the dancers giggling behind her.  
  
“The nerve she has, after all the lady ghost does for her. She should show more appreciation,” little Jammes said very seriously.  
  
“She does.” And this came from little Meg Giry, who clapped her hands over her mouth at once, startled that she had betrayed herself.  
  
Naturally, all the dancers rounded on her immediately, and demanded explanation.  
  
“Mum has seen her,” she relented, after a great deal of prodding. “Just last week, she left a box of chocolates _in box 5_.” She delivered this with an air of profound intensity, then leaned back, in wait for gasps of awe that did not come.  
  
“What's so special about box 5?”  
  
“You don't know? It's the lady ghost's box,” Meg said.  
  
“The lady ghost has a private box?”  
  
“Yes! Ma tends to it.”  
  
"What does the lady ghost need a box for?"  
  
"To watch the opera, what else?"  
  
"No, that's not right. Gilbert the fireman said she watches every show from the catwalks above the stage. He's seen her there."  
  
"She does not!" said little Jammes. "She's on stage every night. You can hear her singing with the chorus..."  
  
"I hope she does not dance with us!"  
  
The entire corps de ballet shuddered as one.  
  
La Sorelli had had enough of this talk, and ushered all the girls from her room, insisting they must head on stage for Polyceute. The poorly lit halls held a special menace, tonight, with the memory of that ghastly scream haunting its corners. A cry came up from the flock, as the girls realized one of their number was missing.  
  
"Mathilde! Where is Mathilde?"  
  
They clustered tight together about La Sorelli's feet, as if afraid any one of them might be snatched up next.  
  
"She was asking around for stories," Little Giry said. "She must be in the haunted practice room."  
  
"The haunted practice room?" Sorelli said.  
  
"Yes, the one where you can hear the lady ghost singing."  
  
"The one with the cracked mirror."  
  
"Why would she go there? ...little fool!"  
  
"Haven't you heard? The old door-shutters say that the lady ghost loves stories. If you go there and you tell her one, she will give you good luck. Mathilda must have wanted luck tonight..."  
  
Indeed, this rumor had been all over the opera house for weeks. It was not uncommon to see persons from every trade within the Garnier slip to that room after hours, and whisper tales of fairies and hobgoblins to the blank glass.  
  
"I think she is quite too busy to listen to stories right now," Sorelli said with a huff. "Breaking people's wrists...Oh, Mme Valerius! You have got lost backstage again."  
  
Sorelli waded out from the crowd of chattering girls to the lonely old woman leaning heavily on a walking stick beside the wall. The stately old dame said nothing, turning her head slowly away from the group still clustered around Carlotta's door. Shadow pooled in the dips and wrinkles of her face, so that she looked almost a ghost herself. Sorelli placed a hand on her shoulder and spoke loud and slow, as if to a half-deaf child.  
  
"The grand foyer is behind you, madame, you must take this turn here. Then you must go UPSTAIRS to reach your box."  
  
She did not wait to see that the old woman followed her instructions, continuing down the hall with her entourage following close behind. Nor did any one of them pay any attention to the pained look on the old woman's face, or the way her hands trembled as she turned herself around and limped away towards the grand foyer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1 It was important to designate the lady ghost, because there were a great deal of spooks within the opera walls--including a head of fire that patrolled the lower basements and a shade in a felt hat who lurked deeper still--but only one was female.  [ [return to text](%E2%80%9C#return1%E2%80%9D) ]


	4. A New Muse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I aint't dead, I just got eaten by another fandom  
> It has been a rough year so far, but I'm going to try to work on this more.

Round the side of the Palais Garnier, lines of carriages rolled to the curb and deposited their gentlemen and ladies onto the walk before rolling off again. One young gentleman, a fair youth in his early twenties, slipped away from the calm presence of his older sibling and hurried into the building. He darted through the crowd to the grand foyer like a hummingbird in search of a flower, moving just a hair faster than was polite.  
  
This young man was the victomte Raoul de Chagny, and the brother he had left behind was the comte, Philipe. Presently, he spotted his quarry, and a bright grim beamed from beneath his thin mustache. His eyes had caught on the two sober figures, each dark in a different way, who stood a little apart from the merry crowd.  
  
The first glowered at the base of the grand staircase, doing his best to appear as if the statues beside him required his company, and not that he was waiting for anyone. The second man had planted himself about three stairs up, where he had a better vantage of the crowd. The boldest of the opera goes sometimes came to the first man to attempt conversation, only receiving curt replies in return. The most superstitious of them gave a wide berth to the second man, and made secret wards against the evil eye.  
  
“Ah, Erik!” he said, sweeping his way to the dour figure standing at the base of the staircase. To the spectators, it must have seemed as if a ray of sunlight were coming over to greet a cave shadow.  
  
The man turned.  
  
He was not handsome, by the fashion of the day, his bone structure a little too heavy, his eyes too dark and sunken, his nose too large. Yet, the overall combination of his features proved compelling, in its own way. His eyes were a very light brown which flared gold when the light caught them just right, giving him some resemblance to a hawk.  
  
“You are late, M. le Vicomte,” he said.  
  
“We had a little trouble with one of the carriage horses,” the youth replied. “Have we missed anything?”  
  
“Only the most boring speech by the minister of fine arts.”  
  
“It is good to see you, Raoul,” said the second man, smiling warmly. 'The Persian', the opera patrons called him, and there were few living figures in that place more surrounded by mystery. He was darker than either of his companions, his skin a medium brown, his hair a gray-speckled black mostly hidden beneath his astrakhan cap.   
  
“You as well, monsieur,” Raoul told him.  
  
“Yes, yes, let us get settled into our box. I’ve tired of standing out here for people to stare at,” Erik said.  
  
“The idea of the thing is to socialize, I think,” said the man behind him, amused.  
  
“I’ll socialize in my own way, daroga,” Erik told him.  
  
"Your own way? You mean, by staring at people in silence until they feel uncomfortable and slink away?" Raoul asked.  
  
"It is an unusual approach," the persian agreed.  
  
Erik sighed. "I should never have let you two meet," he said. "I knew you would inevitably join forces against me."  
  
"Only for your own good," the persian told him, and they set off for the boxes together.  
  
Raoul could feel the eyes of his peers upon him as he settled himself into Box 3. He had been back home from the navy for only a few months, and already he was gathering a reputation as a man with odd friends. Take the man sitting at his side, for example. Erik Dumont had distinguished himself as a composer of unholy talent, whose compositions filled the soul with dark fire, yet the more high society reached for him, the more he spurned it. Everyone wanted to know how the young vicomte had secured the friendship of such a recluse, but Raoul had no interest in telling them if Erik did not wish it known.  
  
Then there was the matter of Erik's friend, the persian, a man whose true name and means remained a mystery even to Raoul. Erik spurned such common social niceties as introductions, and he always called his friend by the nickname 'daroga'. Uncertain what else to do, Raoul had taken to calling the man that as well. He did not seem to mind.  
  
“Well, are you excited?” Raoul asked. At Erik’s changeless glower, he elaborated, “They’re debuting a piece from your new opera tonight, are they not?”  
  
“One of the arias, yes.”  
  
“And how many ladies will faint by the ending, hm?” Raoul asked with an air of conspiracy.  
  
Erik did not share his amusement. His gaze was suddenly distant, staring through the thick red curtains which hid the stage.  
  
“This one is different,” he said. “I have a new muse.”  
  
Raoul and the persian exchanged mystified glances. Erik had never spoken of having a muse before. Yet he could get no more out of the composer on the subject, and reluctantly dropped the matter. His brother Phillipe arrived only minutes before the performance was to begin, looking harried and pale.  
  
"Has something happened?" Raoul asked him.  
  
"Someone has broken a soprano's wrist. She was found in La Carlotta's dressing room, sobbing on the floor. Caught in the act of trying to sabotage the singer, it seems. None of the scene shifters will admit to doing it. Dreadful business."  
  
The men all made noises of dismay, save Erik, who appeared to have lost interest in the conversation.   
  
"Of course, everyone is blaming the opera ghost," Philipe said.  
  
"What superstitious nonsense," Erik said.  
  
The performance began, interrupting the discussion.   
  
The gala began with the jewel song from Faust, sung prettily enough by a stand-in for Mlle. Fay. Then followed a short romp on stage by the ballet corps, and a few other popular arias. Raoul quickly sank into rapture, ignoring the soft chatter of people around him. Raoul had loved music for as long as he could remember. It was for this reason he insisted on dragging his brother to the opera as often as he did.  Most of the people here weren't here for the music, but to see and be seen. Some nights Raoul wished they would turn the lights off and make the patrons stay quiet so he could better immerse himself.  
  
“When is your piece?” he asked Erik as the ballet rats fled the stage.  
  
“Just next. See, here comes La Carlotta to do her best butchering of my composition.”  
  
“Erik, she's the golden voice of Paris!” Raoul protested.  
  
“I've heard better,” Erik replied, and his eyes were distant.  
  
La Carlotta strutted to the center stage, beaming to her audience. Then she opened her mouth, and by the second verse, Raoul was lost utterly to the world. He had never heard such music before, certainly not from anything composed by Erik. Erik could drag a soul into hell with his melodies, could inflame the passions so greatly that on the debut of his second major work there had nearly been a riot, but this? This seemed something stolen from the heavens, wrenched from the harp of some reclining angel. Even Carlotta's agile voice could not quite keep up with the score, and at times she stumbled.  Yet the spell was unbroken. The whole house fell silent, every eye fixed on the stage, until the last trembling note died upon the air.   
  
“Eric...” Raoul breathed.  
  
“She did not practice enough,” Erik said, and his face had the stony quality of someone trying too hard to reign in their emotions.  
  
For a minute that silence held, the people too dazed to even think of moving, and Carlotta herself swaying lightly in place. Then the applause swelled, chasing away the last echoes of that sweet music with thunderous din.  
  
“It is a good work, my friend,” the persian said. “Your best yet.”  
  
“Excellent! Truly,” Phillipe added.  
  
Erik simply sat still, seemingly deaf to all these compliments, his eyes fixed on something above the stage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There he is, the fellow you've all been waiting for!  
> Why does Erik still have a Scandinavian name, despite being very, very french? He's just mysterious that way.

**Author's Note:**

> Does anyone know of a good image host that works for fanworks? Right now I'm just taking the images from my tumblr but I don't know if that's a faux pas or not...
> 
> Updates may be slow but I'm going to try and get through the whole novel.  
> Update schedule? Ha ha ha well I'll try to post more often than once every 5 months, but no promises.


End file.
